Help for English Students

Dichotomies in Dickinson’s What Mystery Pervades a Well!

‘What Mystery Pervade a Well!’ is one of the more difficult Emily Dickinson poems on the HSC Syllabus. The reductive nature of the Area of Study (where everything must be analysed in terms of what it says about the concept of “belonging”) makes it even more difficult. One way to approach this poem is to think of in terms of dichotomies.

A dichotomy is when something is divided into two opposing halves and, whether you knew the word before or not, I guarantee that you use dichotomies all the time: hot and cold, good and evil, natural and artificial, young and old, male and female.

The two dichotomies that are most useful in ‘What Mystery Pervades a Well!’ (as well as in some of the other Dickinson poems) are natural vs artificial and female vs male. In the poem Dickinson sets up two opposing sides. On the one side are: water and Nature, represented as female and, ultimately, unknowable–this is the “mystery” of the title. On the opposing side are man-made objects such as the well, the domesticated “grass” and “sedge” and traditionally masculine ways of knowing, such as science.

The man-made “well” surrounds the feminine and mysterious “water” but is unable to contain its alienness. The masculine “grass does not appear afraid” but the speaker of the poem is in “awe”. The poem suggests that this is the proper response to Nature. The metaphor is then extended and enlarged. “The sea” takes the place of the “well” and the domesticated “grass” becomes a wilder “sedge”.

The purpose of this masculine/feminine, grass/water dichotomy is made clear in the final stanza of the poem. The speaker of the poem pities the men who try, and fail, to know Nature. These could be scientists or male poets, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau. They, being male, struggle to approach Nature with the attitude of awe mentioned earlier.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.